Bookshelf: Your Wealth Library
“The beauty of doing a lot of reading and thinking is that if you’re good at it, you don’t have to do much else.” −Charlie Munger
“The [person] who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the [person] who can’t read them.” −Mark Twain
My book, Wealth Your Way is the culmination of three decades of experience, blending personal insights with the knowledge I’ve gained from reading countless books, articles, newsletters, and blogs.
As a result, my library is an ever-expanding collection: most books finished, a few waiting to be opened. As you build your own library, the books you’ve read will serve as reminders of the knowledge you’ve gained, while the unread ones will hint at the wisdom you’ve yet to discover. The partially read volumes? They gently remind us that the pursuit of knowledge is an ongoing adventure.
I’m often asked about additional reading material, so I decided to put my book recommendations in one place. What follows is my curated list of books that resonated with me as I shaped (and continue to evolve) my thoughts on accumulating, spending, and enjoying wealth.
I’ve organized the books into broad categories to help you focus on specific areas of interest as you navigate your financial journey.
Don’t know where to begin? Start with the first book in the category that catches your interest, and work your way through from there. There are no shortcuts to deeper understanding. Grab a highlighter and start reading.
And remember to read intelligently. If you find that you can easily grasp the content of what you are reading, you are essentially stockpiling information. When you read something that compels you to pause, reflect, and reread to clarify your understanding, it’s likely this process is deepening your insight.
If you aspire to be a better investor, thinker, and person, cultivate open-mindedness, be inquisitive, show enthusiasm, stay true to your core values, and read intelligently every chance you get.
Let me know what books I should consider adding to the list!
I’ll update this list periodically, so feel free to check back from time to time for new additions. (Last updated: 10.15.24)
Planning for Wealth and Seeing the Big Picture
Cosmo P. DeStefano, Wealth Your Way: A Simple Path to Financial Freedom
Ben Carlson, A Wealth of Common Sense: Why Simplicity Trumps Complexity in Any Investment Plan
Ramit Sethi, I Will Teach You to Be Rich
J. L. Collins, The Simple Path to Wealth: Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life
Brian Portnoy, The Geometry of Wealth: How to Shape a Life of Money and Meaning
John C. Bogle, Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life
Nick Murray, Simple Wealth, Inevitable Wealth
Robert C. Carlson, The New Rules of Retirement: Strategies for a Secure Future
Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy
Investing, Part I: Learning the Fundamentals
John C. Bogle, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns
Charles D. Ellis, Winning the Loser’s Game: Timeless Strategies for Successful Investing
Burton G. Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Best Investment Guide that Money Can Buy
William J. Bernstein, The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
Jeremy J. Siegel, Stocks for the Long Run: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns and Long-term Investment Strategies
Nick Maggiulli, Just Keep Buying: Proven Ways to Save Money and Build Your Wealth
Peter Lynch, One Up on Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market
Philip A. Fisher, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
Zvi Bodie and Rachelle Taqqu, Risk Less and Prosper: Your Guide to Safer Investing
Steven Bavaria, The Income Factory: An Investor’s Guide to Consistent Lifetime Returns
Investing, Part II: Going Deeper with Second-Level Thinking
Howard Marks, The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor
Howard Marks, Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side
Seth A. Klarman, Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor [This book is out of print but it’s worth trying to find a copy]
Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing with commentary by Jason Zweig [in particular, Chapters 8 and 20]
Mark Spitznagel, Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms
Michael J. Mauboussin, The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
The Pre-Retirement and Early Retirement Years
Christine Benz, How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement
Wes Moss, You Can Retire Sooner than You Think: The 5 Money Secrets of the Happiest Retirees
Darrow Kirkpatrick, Can I Retire Yet? How to Make the Biggest Financial Decision of the Rest of Your Life
Todd Tresidder, How Much Money Do I Need to Retire?
Wade Pfau, Safety-First Retirement Planning: An Integrated Approach for a Worry-Free Retirement
Ernie Zelinksi, How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free: Retirement Wisdom That You Won’t Get from Your Financial Advisor
Frazer Rice, Wealth, Actually: Intelligent Decision-Making for the 1%
Tom McCullough and Keith Whitaker, Wealth of Wisdom: The Top 50 Questions Wealthy Families Ask
Your Money Mindset and Thinking Clearly
Morgan M. Housel, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness
Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts
Jason Zweig, Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich
Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers’ Yachts? or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street
Carl Richards, The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money
Meir Statman, Finance for Normal People: How Investors and Markets Behave
David DiSalvo, What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite
David McRaney, How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion
Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics
History and Separating Fact from Fiction
Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World—and Why Things Are Better than You Think
William Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life
Ben Carlson, Don’t Fall for It: A Short History of Financial Scams
William J. Bernstein, The Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups
Eric Balchunas, The Bogle Effect: How John Bogle and Vanguard Turned Wall Street Inside Out and Saved Investors Trillions
Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Brent Goldfarb and David Kirsch, Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation
Michael Batnick, Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments
Edward Chancellor, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
Arthur T. Vanderbilt II, Fortune’s Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt
Robert F. Brunner and Sean D. Carr, The Panic of 1907: Heralding a New Era of Finance, Capitalism, and Democracy
Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk
Knowledge, Wisdom, and Using Mental Models
Robert G. Hagstrom, Investing: The Last Liberal Art
David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
Tren Griffin, Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor
James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow
Note: These are affiliate links to Amazon. If you order any of these books, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.
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